On June 2, the convicted Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti walked out of a Brazilian prison a free man. He did so after Brazil’s supreme court upheld the decision of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to refuse to extradite Battisti to Italy. A member of the left-wing terror group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC) during Italy’s blood-ridden “years of lead” in the 1970s, Battisti had been on the run from Italian justice for nearly thirty years, since escaping from a prison near Rome in October 1981.

It even includes a special appearances by geopolitical bungling meddler, Bernard-Henri Lévy, the pasty head of the Socialist Party, and Paris' token gay Mayor..

In the intervening years, Battisti had become a cause célèbre of the French left. Following his February 2004 arrest in Paris, the then chair of the French Socialist party, François Hollande, would visit Battisti in prison, in order to “make clear [his] disapproval.” Alluding to the “Mitterrand doctrine,” Hollande insisted that France had to “keep its word.” Hollande is the current frontrunner to obtain the Socialist nomination for the French presidential elections in 2012. The city of Paris, under the leadership of Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë, likewise expressed its support.

Three years later, in May 2007, it was the turn of globetrotting French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy to visit Battisti in prison—this time in Brazil. After the Brazilian supreme court ruled in a first decision that there were no legal grounds to prevent Battisti from being extradited to Italy, “BHL” penned an impassioned letter to the Brazilian president, appealing to him to refuse Battisti’s extradition

Lévy wrote in the typical arrogant terms of those who see themselves as the masters of the universe and unimpeachable high lords of justice.

...I would be dismayed – there are many of us in the world who would be dismayed – to see “our” Lula doing damage to the tradition of welcoming refugees that is the pride of your country. Extraditing Battisti would create a dangerous precedent.

Abusing term the term beyond despair, that "refugee", obfuscating his crimes under the babble of turning his standing as merely "an affair":

Alberto Torregiani was 13 years old on February 16, 1979, when his father Pierluigi was shot in the head by members of Italy’s Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC) in Milan. The younger Torregiani also took a bullet that day and ended up a paraplegic. Now he spends most days in a wheelchair...

...Cesare Battisti, a member of PAC who was convicted of murdering four Italians in the 1970s, including the elder Torregiani.

His explanation?

“Clearly it’s not enough to use diplomacy, so the people’s voice must be heard.”

The PEOPLE! That generic mass imagined to have a monolithic outlook that matched his own, whether they like it or not.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn even picked up the trope (referring to him as a "militant turned crime writer") in "the words one must say" to appeal to France's "proletariat" on his way to running for office. The electorate, the one that deems itself "humanistic" expresses that feeling by backing a misguided, ideologically driven murderer.